It has seniors — five, actually — on this year's squad. And four of them played significant minutes last season. But they needed time to adjust to being the big shots. They had always deferred to older players.

It's a showdown between two programs that have grown familiar with the other. Central York and Spring Grove met four times last season, with Central winning three of the matchups, but the lone loss was a painful one: Spring Grove won the league championship game.

The league semifinal matchup marks the schools’ third meeting this year, with each program going on the road to earn a win. Now they meet on a neutral floor, but don’t call it a rivalry just yet.

In their last meeting, Central shut down Spring Grove’s role players and kept Brooks under 40 points to earn the victory. Central won in part because it had five players crack double figures in scoring, but don’t expect Central to rely just on its offensive touch.

“When we won at their place, we had one of our most efficient offensive nights of the season,” Central coach Kevin Schieler said. “But with the way Eli scores, they could probably score up (in the high 60s) as well.”

The bread-and-butter for Central has always been its switching man-to-man defense.

“Central plays a really good defense, a different type of defense,” Spring Grove’s Austin Panter said. “They switch every time on man.”

So instead of coming off a screen and finding an open lane to the hoop, an offensive player will instead find a new Central defender right in his chest.

It’s the same defense Schieler learned and played while a student at York Catholic under coach Mike Keesey. It’s the same defense Schieler implemented shortly after he arrived at Central. And it’s the same defense that his staff knows inside and out.

For instance, assistant Joe Falci used to coach in the York Catholic program. Schieler noted, “he remembers all the little things that I’ve forgotten.”